With recent spread of miniature cameras (for example, a disc camera and a half-size camera), there is a strong demand for achieving a high image quality of silver halide photographic light-sensitive materials. In particular, the above demand is increasingly strong in silve halide color photographic materials that have become very popular.
The silver halide color photographic materials are formed with plural color-sensitive layers, and on the other hand an effort is made for reducing the thickness of photographic component layers of the light-sensitive materials according to the demand for achieving the high image quality.
In the meantime, from view points of improvement in the color sensitivity and sharpness at the low image-frequency region, it has been practiced that the so-called DIR compound is added in the respective color-sensitive layers to achieve the improvement in sharpness by virtue of edge effect, and also to improve the graininess by appropriately restraining the development performance of silver halide. Various proposals have been made on such DIR compound in Japanese Patent Publication Open to Public Inspection (herein after referred to as Japanese Patent O.P.I. Publication) No. 131934/1984, Japanese Patent O.P.I. Publication No. 154234/1982, Japanese Patent Publication No. 27738/1986, etc. The above DIR compound may have its effect to affect also other layer than the layer to which the DIR compound has been added, so that the edge effect in all the color-sensitive layers can be emphasized and the sharpness can be remarkably improved.
Also, in order to improve the sharpness particularly at the high image-frequency region, it is very advantageous to reduce the thickness of the photographic component layers, and it is particularly demanded to reduce the thickness of the photographic component layers in the case of a low sensitivity light-sensitive photographic material for which the high image quality is strongly desired to be achieved.
On the other hand, as a part of achieving the high image quality, it has been practiced to reduce the thickness of the photographic component layers and add the above DIR compound in a low sensitivity layer among the photographic component layers. However, the present inventors had a new finding that when the effect of the DIR compound added to the low sensitivity layer is exerted on the layer other than the layer to which it has been added, it may occur that the image quality is rather deteriorated in respect of the layer to be affected. As a result of further researches, it has become clear that the above deterioration may remarkably occur and the graininess of an image, particularly the graininess at a high density portion, may be extremely deteriorated when the thickness of the light-sensitive materials is reduced, the layers with same color sensitivity are constituted as plural layers having different sensitivities, and the DIR compound is added to a lower sensitivity layer among them.